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Reason Behind IT Success Story of India

I often used to wonder how Indians with little
prior access to computers became a global player in IT industry within
a short span. There were multiple forces – the combined effect of which led to
the explosion of IT market in India. Here I approach this from a different
perspective based on my understanding of Indian culture.

Artificial
Language

Computers run on artificial (i.e. fully man-made)
languages developed from scratch. There is a mathematical certainty about them
– they’re supposed to be used in particular ways though there’s scope of creativity
within the framework.

One may notice that beyond the root terminologies,
there is nothing arbitrary in the grammar of artificial languages. On the contrary, in English we’re given to understand many arbitrary assumptions
which shouldn’t be probed further. Pronunciation often varies widely with
written word.

So in the history of mankind, we always had
natural languages that evolved over a period of time with certain arbitrations
included randomly without any logic or reason. Most languages that I know
belong to this category….except – Sanskrit.

Now seriously? Sanskrit !

What has Sanskrit to do with
the discussion? If you ever had learnt Sanskrit, you may not have failed to
realize that there is an excellent methodology in the language.

Naming the numbers in any Indian
language follow a pattern: 1-10, 11-20, 20-30 etc. Some aberrations may exist
here & there. But with Sanskrit the naming of numbers follows a standard
pattern. If one follows the rule, one can derive how a random number is named
without ever having known it before in Sanskrit. The decimal system that is
followed worldwide is India’s contribution. Hence, there is a systematic
approach in this area even in Western world.

But coming to the more
important aspect, Sanskrit is an artificial language. It was perfected with
mathematical rigour (remember the rama ramah raman etc. 3 X 8 tables) and one
needs to use the right word for each occasion. The arbitrary factor is very
minimal. Sentences can be constructed in many ways as long as the mathematical
formula is intact. Pronunciation doesn’t have any exceptional cases. The word
needs to be pronounced exactly the way it’s written. Even a new word would be read
correctly by a Sanskrit literate person without ever having prior information
on same. (unlike English where prior knowledge is mandatory for many words).

Sanskrit’s grammar was
improvised in stages and reached its pinnacle with Sage Panini who fine-tuned
the grammar with such clarity that it was akin to machine language with no
arbitrary usage or random rules.

Now, it’s true that most
Indian today do not know Sanskrit. But most languages (excepting Tamil), owe
their origin to Sanskrit (with Telugu being the most heavily Sanskritized language)
and use similar linguistic structures.

From Sanskrit to the computer
languages there were no artificial languages in the history of world.

Hence Indians could quite
easily grasp computer languages better than many and without prior access to
computers, owing to their psychological understanding of artificial language.Note: I do not imply that the reason I propose is the sole/major one. Many other factors were responsible for IT growth, I have just offered a different perspective here.

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